"I assure you, I know it for a fact. He is constantly in that state. Of course, nobody sees him so, because his wife generally contrives to hush it up, and not to let him go out. I suppose, he escaped for once from her control . . . If you were only not so easily imposed upon, my dear Cyril! . . . Lady Lucas tells me his wife is a most designing person. She says there can be no doubt whatever that they are hoping to make a catch of you! That the young lady is deliberately setting her cap—to use an expression which—"
Cyril could endure no more. He was in a sick tumult of wrath and wretchedness—of wrath with himself, and of wretchedness about his own action, far more than with or about Sybella. She was only the gadfly, adding to his misery; but when one is already strung to intense endurance, a gadfly in addition becomes unbearable.
He stood up abruptly. "Aunt, will you excuse me, please. We need not discuss the question."
"Is anything the matter? Are you ill?" startled by his look. "I will send for Dr. Ingram."
"If you would be so good as to attend to your own business, and not to mine, that is all I ask!" Cyril hardly knew what he said.
The tension had become too great, and the whole room went round dizzily. He could not have stood alone, or walked slowly, but he was able to dash across the hall and into the study, where he flung himself on the sofa, in an overpowering whirl of brain and mind, physical giddiness predominating for the moment over all else.
He had not had a touch of the sensation for years. It brought back vividly, by the more force of association, his earliest meeting with Jean. He saw again the square block-like stones, the rushing water, the swirl of the whole landscape, the little crouching boy; then he heard Jean's clear voice and light footsteps, and felt her small resolute hand clasping his. He had loved Jean from that day onward.
Another scene mixed itself up with the last; again a stepping-stone scene; only this time Jem, not Jean, came to the rescue.
Cyril heard his own infantine voice asserting positively, "I mean to marry Jean some day!"
And Jem's manlier tones advising delay—advising him to become a man before he spoke; for Jean would never marry one to whom she could not look up.